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Showing posts with the label Yoni's tallit

Ready for tzitzit

Yoni’s tallit is complete, except for the tzitzit. The pinot /corner pieces are stitched to the tallit using a buttonhole stitch. I like the way it mimics the look of a hand stitch. I thought many kind thought’s about Yoni’s savta/ grandmother as I stitched those pinot . Yoni is a deep thinker.  He chose powerful  texts from his haftara.   Of all the kids I have ever worked with he has understood most intuitively about how using texts wisely can change the experience of wearing a tallit.  Most kids ( because after all they are kids)  need a fair amount of hand holding to select texts, and more importantly select texts that work.  Yoni dove right in and made  smart selections.   Tomorrow I go up to Boston. My mother is now in home hospice care.

Clearing my plate

Yesterday I finished adding color to the Isabel’s thank you notes. Tying her tzitzit was scheduled for the late afternoon.  as delightful as this project was,I am glad to put it to bed. Isabel was really delighted with her tallit. Her father joined her for tying the tzitzit. The two shared the task with  much teasing between the two of them.   Unfortunately, I wasn’t quick enough with my camera and I missed Isabel’s jumping for joy moment. I am also working on finishing up Yoni’s tallit.   I have had to abandon some ideas that didn’t work. The text for the atara just didn’t show up on the rock pained fabric. the little green snails are of no theological importance but will make Yoni’s favorite color more dominant on the atara.   I also had a similar false start with the pinot. I still have to sew the corner pieces onto the tallit and make he eyelets. Once I trim all of the loose threads the tallit will be complete.

Steps forward and back

Isabel’s tallit is complete. We just have to schedule the tzitzit tying. I am pretty delighted with this piece.   The atara came out exactly as I had hoped. You can see much of it before it was sewn onto the tallit And here it is on the tallit.   I could not be more pleased. I did more work on Yoni’s tallit.I found a spool of army green thread and realized that rows of machine embroidery in the army green would be perfect. Things were going so well that I decided to add a decorative stitch to the edge of the  rock stripes. I forgot how the stitching will stiffen up the edge of the stripe in a really unpleasant way. I had of course chosen a stitch that was fairly dense.   I had a crazy amount of unpicking to do. Unpicking stitches is probably one of my least favorite activities. I would rather clean toilets. If there were a way to NOT unpick the stitching, I would have done it. Eventually, after several episodes of crappy re...

Connecting with the past

A few months ago I had a craving for my father’s chicken fricassee.  If my father were still alive I would have called him up and he would have talked me through the process of making it.    My father is no longer alive so I turned to my cookbooks and the recipes I found for chicken fricassee were nothing at all like the stew of chicken necks, gizzards and wings in a watery sweet and sour tomato sauce that I enjoyed as a kid.  I assumed that the dish was an invention of my father’s. I then attempted to replicate the dish from my memory of it and failed.   A couple of weeks ago I saw an article on the internet, and I can’t remember where, that talked about Jewish fricassee  and it sounded an awful lot like the dish I was hankering after. This afternoon I went to the butcher and picked up all of the chicken elements of the dish, a couple of packages each of wings, necks and gizzards. My father never cooked directly from a cook book. He used to re...

Evolution

Now that I have finished  the twins tallitot, as attested by this finished corner piece, it is now time to get back to Yoni’s tallit. Yoni’s tallit is a little complicated. It is expressing several ideas from his haftarah.   There are striped representing rocks. I already completed those.   Now I needed to make two leafy stripes. First I dampened the silk. Then I began laying down layers of color.  I let this first pass of color dry over night. I ironed the painted leaves to set the color and then set down more color. It’s getting there, but clearly it isn’t quite enough. Yoni wanted a dark forest green.  I needed to add more color. I also realized that the strips would be vastly improved if I floated a layer of lighter color between the leaves.   I used the now colored water from this painting effort to paint the background. Every once in a while I would add a bit more paint to the water. As I filled in the backgroun...